Lizzy's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Two days of driving put Lizzy past the last town and into country where the pines grew close and the road turned to gravel. The jar of fireflies sat on the passenger seat, still bright, but dimmer than the night she caught them. A few had gone dark at the bottom of the glass. She counted them at every gas stop. She was losing about one an hour. She parked at a pull-off where the trees opened north. The sky above the ridge was already moving. Green ribbons slid across it, then blue, then a streak of violet that curled back on itself like smoke. The northern lights ran the whole horizon. The prince was somewhere under them. She did not know where. She climbed out with the jar. The forest went on for miles in both directions. If she picked wrong, the fireflies would be dead before she found him. She held the glass up and watched the little bodies pulse. Pink. Orange. One more went dark on the lid. She set the jar in the moss and did the only thing she knew. She danced. Slow at first, then harder, until her heels bruised and a thin cut opened on her ankle. Red came out first, then green, then a color she had no name for. The ribbon of it lifted off her skin and drifted up between the birches. It did not fall this time. It climbed. It reached the tops of the trees and kept going, thin as thread, until it touched the aurora above the ridge. The sky bent down to meet it. One band of green peeled loose from the rest and came down through the branches, low enough to brush her hair. It hung there, waiting. She understood. The lights knew where he was. Her blood had called one down to lead her. She grabbed the jar and followed. The ribbon moved ahead of her at a walking pace, weaving between trunks, dipping under low branches. She ran when it sped up. Twice she stumbled and the ribbon slowed for her. The jar bounced against her hip. She could feel the fireflies inside, still alive, still lit. The ribbon led her a half mile in and stopped at the edge of a small clearing. She stopped with it. In the middle of the clearing, a man was dancing. Green hair. Wings like stained glass catching every color the sky had. He spun the way she had seen him spin when she was seven years old, and he had not stopped since. He had not seen her yet. She stood at the tree line with the jar warm in her hands and the ribbon of light fading above her head. She had found him. Now she had to walk out of the trees.